LAX00LA021 · Cessna 172N
Westwind Aviation Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA021
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N738FY
- Operator
- Westwind Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · descent
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight to destination alternate, not performed
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After flying 4.4 Hobbs hours since the last fueling, the engine lost power and the airplane collided with a tree in the ensuing forced landing. Fueling records show the airplane was fueled the day before the accident, and then another renter pilot flew the airplane for 1.3 hours without refueling. The pilot did a preflight of the airplane and checked the left wing tank for fuel by sticking his finger in the filler opening. He did not check the right fuel tank. He noted that the left fuel gauge read full and the right fuel gauge read 3/4 of a tank when he departed. The pilot flew north to Flagstaff and then returned to the local Phoenix area and practiced a touch-and-go at a nearby airport while he waited for the sun to set. He noticed that the fuel gauge needles were not moving, which in his mind may have been an indicator of a low fuel state; however, he said he felt the gauges were inaccurate instead. He elected to continue his flight back to the originating airport, bypassing two airports along the way. The pilot was northeast of the second possible alternate airport when the engine sputtered the first time. He elected to continue his flight towards the destination airport, 12 miles further on, rather than perform a precautionary landing. The engine then lost all power and the pilot executed a forced landing in a clear area. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with a small tree. The airplane's Hobbs meter readings show the pilot flew the airplane for 3.1 hours on the accident flight, for a total of 4.4 hours since the last refueling.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate preflight verification of the fuel quantity, and, once he became aware of the critical fuel state, his decision to over-fly two alternate airports in order to continue to his destination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA021
- Event ID
- 20001212X19994
- Case number
- LAX00LA021
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-10-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a1c516a250aedcb4084bf0735431cfe8c56c7b5fdb02f15f3ef13fc34b482a6e; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:50:29.357Z.